Crytek UK

Basic Information
Company Type	N/A}
Company Industry	N/A
Company Status	Active
Foundation	1999 (Free Radical Design) 2009 (Crytek UK)
Owner	[[Crytek]]
Products	Video games
Location(s)
Nottingham, England

Crytek UK, formerly known as Free Radical Design, is a video game developer based in Sandiacre, England, probably best known for their TimeSplitters video game series, Second Sight and being a first-person shooter developer.

After going into financial administration, it was announced on February 4, 2009 that the studio had been acquired by German video game developer Crytek and would be renamed Crytek UK.

Crytek UK has a good relationship with the city of Nottingham due to its sponsorship of the Gamecity festival and recruitment drives with Nottingham Trent University.

History

Initially, most of Free Radical Design's employees previously worked for the game developer Rare. While at Rare, they (David Doak, Steve Ellis, Karl Hilton, Graeme Norgate and Lee Ray) worked on the Nintendo 64 first-person shooters GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. From late 1998 to early 1999 this team left Rare to form Free Radical Design, which was established in April 1999, their first release being TimeSplitters for the PlayStation 2 in 2000. TimeSplitters attracted attention at the time because of the former Rare employees' work on the critically acclaimed GoldenEye 007. Its sequel TimeSplitters 2 became the highest-ranked first-person shooter on the PlayStation 2.

On December 18, 2008, it was reported that the studio had shut down, though it was later confirmed that the company had gone into administration, leaving 40 of the original 185 staff still employed.

On February 3, 2009, Haze scriptwriter Rob Yescombe announced that Free Radical Design had been purchased by German games developer Crytek which was then confirmed by Crytek themselves the following day.

During 2010, Crytek UK will move from Sandiacre to brand new offices in the new central Nottingham Southreef development. The £50 million pound investment will allow Crytek UK to "grow over the next few months".

Works

Released

• TimeSplitters (2000) for PlayStation 2
• TimeSplitters 2 (2002) for PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox
• Second Sight (2004) for PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox and Windows
• TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (2005) for PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox
• Haze (2008) for PlayStation 3

Unreleased games

• TimeSplitters 4
• Star Wars: Battlefront III
• Crysis 2 (multiplayer)

External links

• Official site of Crytek

Template:Crytek